My friend Sophie has an overactive imagination

People have told me for years that I have an overactive imagination. I haven’t understood it until recently. Now I get it! When I imagine something good, like say what a garden will look like, I see it clearly in my mind’s eye. It’s verdant, green beyond imagining and full of flowers, in some cases flowers that I hadn’t had any plans to plant. Hundreds of pounds of vegetables come out of it and I can picture myself with lovely arranged baskets of produce, going from house to house to share the bounty. When I look at potential houses to buy, I see swimming pools surrounded by palms and sometimes even with pool boys. The kitchens have commercial grade appliances, storage abounds, full of All-clad pans, a bit dented and warped from their continual use.

When people tell me about their trips to the dentist, I get an equal but opposite reaction. The drilling sound rings in my ears, the bit the size of a #2 pencil. Holes pass through your jaw and extend down into your neck.

So, what does it all mean? It means that my mind’s eye furnishes ideas often more lavishly than Hollywood. Books are movies. Stories too. The gift is that my vision isn’t bound up in reality and I can envision the realm of what might be as clearly as if it were in front of me. The curse is that what might be might not come true. So positive imaginings are often disappointing however, the negative is NEVER as bad as expected. I am often prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised, while I am never unprepared for a rousing success. I think that’s what it means to have an overactive imagination.

I have been thinking about the concept of perception for years. I read a quote once about customer retention mostly had to do the perception of having been helped and appreciated. (??) Not of actually being helped or appreciated but “the Perception” of being helped. What a difference. Our mind is so unbelievably powerful.

“It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.”
C. W. Leadbeater quotes